[Nook Color General] a.fenderson:
microSD card (and reference device) benchmarks, round 2

(see Part 1 earlier in the thread)

A quick review of my first of 3 accessories: I received the Veho Mino microSD(HC) card reader today, cost was $4.00 after shipping. It's a wee bit smaller than typical USB flash drive, has a cap on the USB end, and accepts only microSD(HC) cards in the slot. The cap isn't symmetrical inside, but it is outside, meaning it only fits on properly for one orientation, so that's kinda confusing. Also the card slot is not the spring-loaded type, and when inserted a card will stick out about 1/3 of the way, meaning it's not a good idea to leave the card in the reader and put it in your pocket etc. Drivers installed automatically on both my Win XP machines, and it does work with microSDHC cards. It's a cute little reader, but could have been both smaller and more elegantly designed.

Benchmarks were done with CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1, on an internal card reader connected to mobo usb pin headers: this time, I had BD-Rebuilder running during encode phase, so x264 was utilizing 100% on both cores but at "low" thread priority. I reran benchmarks of one card and one USB drive from round 1 and compared the results--the differences are negligible (see below, compare to originals). I did 5 runs per test, with a 50MB file size--everything else was left at default.

4GB SanDisk Class 4 micro SDHC

card history: brand new, first use

card origin: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002T8GP8M (seller: abe-123)

(note: seller listed it as a Class 2 card, but shipped a Clas 4)

Sequential Read : 4.347 MB/s
Sequential Write : 3.775 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 4.346 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 1.529 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 2.050 MB/s [ 500.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 1.156 MB/s [ 282.1 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 2.004 MB/s [ 489.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.898 MB/s [ 219.2 IOPS]

1GB Sandisk pre-Class micro SD card

card history: brand new, first use

card origin: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000J45BK6 (seller: BlueProton)

Sequential Read : 4.371 MB/s
Sequential Write : 4.426 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 4.369 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 1.938 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 2.164 MB/s [ 528.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.026 MB/s [ 6.2 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 2.207 MB/s [ 538.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.028 MB/s [ 6.7 IOPS]

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Reference benchmarks below were done for comparison and to establish that 100% processor load did not affect I/O systems significantly during testing.

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Sandisk Cruzer Micro 16GB USB flash drive

Sequential Read : 28.525 MB/s
Sequential Write : 6.393 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 28.521 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 2.660 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 5.673 MB/s [ 1385.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.010 MB/s [ 2.5 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 6.378 MB/s [ 1557.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.018 MB/s [ 4.5 IOPS]

8 GB Kingston Class 4

Sequential Read : 4.226 MB/s
Sequential Write : 3.922 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 4.229 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 1.051 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 1.484 MB/s [ 362.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.011 MB/s [ 2.6 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 1.623 MB/s [ 396.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.026 MB/s [ 6.4 IOPS]